Howard Dean’s been getting more religious out on the campaign road, but his theology on loving your neighbor is a bit dubious.
Later, Dr. Dean flashed his much-talked-about temper at a town-hall-style forum here in a sharp exchange with a 67-year-old retiree, Dale Ungerer. Mr. Ungerer, who said he was a registered Republican but had sometimes voted for Democrats, challenged Dr. Dean to “please tone down the garbage, the mean-mouthing of tearing down your neighbor and being so pompous,” questioning why the candidate spent so much time bashing President Bush.
Dr. Dean declared, “George Bush is not my neighbor.” As Mr. Ungerer, stood up, Dr. Dean said, “You sit down. You’ve had your say, and now I’m going to have my say.”
“I love my neighbor, but I want that neighbor back in Crawford, Tex., where he belongs,” Dr. Dean said. “The president is always my president but the president is not my neighbor if he takes 500,000 kids off their health care benefits.”
Actually, neighborliness, in the Biblical sense, has nothing to do with the apparent sinfulness, or lousy policies, of the person in question.
The enmity between Jews and Samaritans over custom and religion was legendary, hence Jesus using the parable of the Good Samaritan as the explicit answer of who one’s neighbor is — your neighbor being whom you must love “as yourself” in order to inherit eternal life. The neighbor of the robbed man was not the people on “his side,” not the folks who agreed with him on public policy, but “the one who had mercy on him.”
In a sense, it’s even worse than that. Being a neighbor becomes an explicit — and required — act of love and mercy, without which one cannot have eternal life. By rejecting someone as your neighbor, you, yourself, are not being a neighbor, and are so held accountable.
As Blinne notes:
The expert in the Law (a.k.a. a Pharisee) sought to justify himself by defining people away as his neighbor. Jesus replied with the Parable of the Good Samaritan which focused not on who your neighbor was but rather what was the characteristics of a good neighbor (showing mercy).
The Bible, and Jesus, certainly allows for righteous anger against sin and wrong-doing. If Dean feels that Bush has committed a wrong when he (as Dean put it) “takes 500,000 kids off their health care benefits,” it’s certainly acceptable to be angry about that, and work to stop it. But that doesn’t mean that Bush is not Dean’s neighbor, in the Biblical sense. And if Dean is going to couch answers in religious terms, he might want to get his theology straight when he does so.
I would have liked Dr. Dean to have said something like this:
Yes, I am George Bush’s neighbor. And we are both your neighbor. I don’t believe, however, that President Bush’s policies live up to our common goals for the American people. That is why I am running for President. Detailed discussion follows…
Yes. That would have been quite proper.
In fact, the more I think about this, the more irked I get. Dean attacking Bush in a religious context is as reprehensible as the reverse. Indeed, if it had been Dubya saying the same thing about Dean, we would have seen a front page headline on the NY Times, decrying the Right-Wing Conservative Christian Zealots Who Use Religion to Attack Their Enemies, Those Dastards, along editorials about the Intolerant Right and how the GOP was demanding an Religious Litmus Test on the presidency. Not to mention editorial cartoons of Bush in a preacher’s garb (flight suit discarded to the side) under the heading “Holier Than Thou?”
Instead, just a little blurb buried in a short article about Dean in Iowa. Ah, well.
A little blurb? It’s all over the place. So-called liberal media, my behind.
I don’t read it as religious imagery; Dean had a point and was correct in his use of the word. There’s a lot of hooey being made out of this, especially in light of the fact that many folks aren’t quoting the entire story — just the bits they want to use.
For the record, I’m still not 100% committed to Dean; Clark has me guessing. We’ll see how it plays out. Either will be better than the current resident of the office.
Okay, well the NY Times article seems to have been a short one, and the headline certainly doesn’t trumpet it. I don’t see mention of it on InstaPundit, or Ipse Dixit, or Volokh, or other sources I read that you’d probably consider the sorts who would leap all over such a story.
On rereading the story, I see that the exchange in question did not take place at a church, as I’d first believd. On the other hand, the phrase “I love my neighbor” is pretty clear-cut religion, especially in the context of Dean’s recent move to become more overtly religious in his campaign.
The Reuters story omits that whole “love your neighbor” part of the exchange, and the AP story doesn’t do much better.
The NewsMax story (and, yeah, NewsMax spins way rightward) quotes it as:
Then, in a particularly ugly sound bite, the Democratic front-runner added, “It’s not the time to put up any of this ‘love thy neighbor’ stuff.”
“I love my neighbor,” Dean insisted. “But I’ll tell you I want THAT neighbor back in Crawford, Texas, where he belongs.”
In AP story, Dean, restating it as “support your neighbor” says that sort of philosophy is being twisted around to mean you can’t criticize the President because it’s unpatriotic. While I have heard the argument (that criticizing the President is unpatriotic) and reject it, I’ve not heard anyone tying that back to the idea of loving your neighbor (or even supporting him).
I see the media reporting on the incident into the “Dean’s temper” issue, but I’ve not run across anyone (left or right) but Rich discussing it from a religious standpoint.
I don’t think there is anything deliberate in the media here. I think they just missed it. It is also possible that Dean missed it too. The whole “anger” thing has been the whole story in both the liberal and conservative press. When I watched it, he didn’t seem all that angry, though.
My theory is the press is so obsessed with “find a gaffe” that they are not doing deeper analysis of what is being said. It doesn’t matter whether the media is left or right they have a vested interest in the incivility of our public discourse (e.g. Crossfire and Hannity and Colmes). It is also easier to do the journalism. So, if either called Dr. Dean on this, their own hypocrisy would become evident. Furthermore, a civil discourse on the issues of the day is boring and would make for bad ratings (or a low number blog hits). If this is an example of media bias, it is not a liberal bias but a bias to be sensational.
For the record, based on the audio clip I’ve heard, the NY Times piece elides a substantial diatribe about the Evils of George Bush between his “sit down” and his “I love my neighbor” lines.
The Boston Globe article on the subject (via infamous right-wingnut Roger Simon) is more complete than the others, including the questioner’s explicit mention of the Bible’s “love your neighbor.”
Ditto here. It used to be that the NYT was the journal of record. What that means is that you would have had a verbatim record of the entire quote. Now it is much more like USA Today. The order that I recall is:
1. Question to Dean about his neighbor.
2. “George Bush is not my neighbor.”
3. Applause
4. “You sit down”
5. Extended diatribe.
6. Send my “neighbor” back to Crawford.
This is why I would have preferred it if Dean had just not decided to take this approach. I’m not settled on any of the Democratic options other than if Lieberman somehow gets the nomination it’ll ensure I won’t vote Democratic as in many ways he’s worse than Bush in my mind.
I don’t mind my politicians being religions, but like a lot of people it doesn’t seem like too many of them have put much thought into what they believe or why and what it’s really supposed to mean. I’m with ***Dave that Dean doesn’t seem to grasp that whole “love they neighbor” thing, but that’s not surprising as a lot of people don’t. It’s a tough standard to try and live up to and a lot of people who do understand the message have a hard time meeting it. That in itself isn’t a problem until you start tossing it around as Dean appears to be trying to do and then folks start expecting you to match your claims. If it’s clear you don’t even understand the principle you’re claiming you’re trying to live up to then you end up looking like an idiot and possibly dishonest.
I’ve grown more uncomfortable with Dean as he’s tried to apply the religion card. I wish he’d drop it and focus on the issues.
I’m reluctant to debate whether a person is sincere in their religiosity (just as I’m unwilling to speculate that Dean’s so angry because he’s short, or Bush is trying to compete with his dad); it’s way too easy to toss accusations around without any real basis.
That said, I’m unimpressed by Dean’s apparent opportunism in being more open about his beliefs. If he’d stuck by his, “I’m from the Northeast, we’re private about that,” or even, “I’ll judge the audience and setting and we’ll see what happens,” that would have been okay, too. Instead, it feels as though he’s trying to be something that he’s not — whether that’s merely being talkative about his beliefs, or casting things in religious terms, or just being religious. I agree — his best bet is to stick with issues, not try to play to the crowd.
And, Les, you’re absolutely right — the standard of loving one’s neighbor is extraordinarily difficult; certainly not one I regularly meet myself. It’s not so much whether Dean does or not, it’s that he doesn’t seem to get what it means, at least in this interchange.
Since I was the one who raised the issue it should be noted that the religious experts of the day didn’t get it, either. So, given that Dean is clearly not an expert on this topic then he should be given some slack on this. The same goes for the media.
But there is this quote that puts this matter in context. Earlier in the week, Dr. Dean said, “Don’t you think Jerry Falwell reminds you a lot more of the Pharisees than he does of the teachings of Jesus?” So, if he is going to hold Dr. Falwell to conformance to the teachings of Jesus, it is fair to do the same with him. When he stated that George Bush was not his neighbor he also accused the President of not being a good neighbor. So, the long and the short of it is not that Dr. Dean falls short of the Golden Rule — we all do — but that he is being hypocritical.